new beer uses crowd sourcing gimmick

crowd funding is all the rage at the moment, companies are using to fund there next project, Iceland is using it to forge it countries constitution, so that its more fair and amicable to the people of ice land. now all these things are good, its good to engage your market in such things but I’m a little skeptical if this principle can be applied to all areas of business, i’m a fair believer that certain areas need a dictator as it were, do you think Microsoft or apple could have become the companies they are without the single minded focus that was Bill Gates and Steve Jobs respectively, i don’t think so, which is why i’m little skeptical about this latest piece of news coming out London.

it turns out that London craft brewer Meantime Brewing is set to launch a new beer with “crowd sourced” hops grown throughout the capital, effectively giving up all control of the hops they use. this Hop city porter was apparently created to reflect the true flavour of the capital and should go on sale around its birth place on the 9th of December.

so the story behind this beer goes a little something like this, earlier this year the brewer went out and planted hops across some of London’s most famous landmarks, landmarks such as St James’ Park, Regent’s Park, The Natural History Museum, The National Theatre, Battersea Power Station and The Roof Gardens. this comes just as London is once again becoming intrigued by brewing and the brewer hopes this will engage the populace more in the beer they drink.

from these hops the created hop city and Hop City is a dark and complex porter-style brew, brimming with character, says the brewer. Dark malt flavours such as chocolate, coffee and caramel are balanced by a distinct hoppy freshness. The result is a full bodied beer with a satisfying aftertaste. or so the marketing material says, i’ll try to get a bottle to review if i can.

the hops weren’t the only part of this beer that was crowd sourced though, the name was also crowd sourced, This is just nauseating to read, this is sounding more like a gimmick. you make beer, the only gimmick you need is making good beer.

Nick Miller, Meantime’s chief executive, said: “London is an exciting place to be a brewer right now. The variety of ingredients at our disposal is huge and it allows us to pack flavour into our beer. More than ever, the public are interested in ingredients and where they come from — the hop gardens have got people talking and asking questions about how their beer is brewed. Hop City is a celebration of the beer style that London is famous for.”

Alastair Hook, the Meantime brewmaster who has been brewing in the capital for more than 20 years and who has been a leading light in the revival of beer-making in the city, added: “We’re Londoners at heart. Our beer is rooted in this town’s colourful brewing past, both in flavour and in character, but also in attitude. We’ve been growing hops with people and outlets that share our passion for this fine city and hope doing has got a few more people excited about the quiet revolution going on in beer making.

“This will be a beer made by Londoners, for Londoners.”

so what do you think? a huge gimmick or master stroke on behalf of the brewery.

2 thoughts on “new beer uses crowd sourcing gimmick”

I think it’s both a gimmick and a master stroke, in that I doubt they’ll do it again (the logistics of growing and sourcing hops from across London must have been painful at best and anarchic at worst) while as a ‘master stroke’ it will probably sell out with acclaim.

Let’s not forget BrewDog have done something similar with their #Mashtag crowdsourced beers, where they gave three options for each of the name/label/malt/hops/etc and allowed Twitter users to vote/design the beer.

It’s gimmicky, yes, but a good PR stunt to involve people in the brew method. I think there’s more of this to come from brewers.

yeah i think its going to sell out, i was going to do a follow up piece either today or tomorrow about this, the brewer has since came out and said that the actually process of getting the hops means that many of them will simply be put in the bin.

yeah but brewdog has a habit of doing things like that, i know this is the future of brewing, i just hope brewers remember that good beer should always be their first priority.